Category: talesfromthefoot.com

All of the old posts from my old website talesfromthefoot.com.

Best Dam Barefoot Race… The BFC Recap

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Work and getting my ski team on the water has been keeping me busy, but I did see the recap posted by Barefoot Central written by Aaron Schoelzel. There are some good details on how the race went between the 3 boats at the front of the race. Be sure to check it out for details about just how close the race was. And yes, my team was one of the teams throwing up rollers for leaders to go through on their way back to the finish-start line.

They also have a couple videos in their recap… the first has interviews with the top 3 teams…

Download Best Dam Top 3

The second video has 8 minutes of them chatting in the car on the way to the race, but watch the end for the interview with Teri Bell, one of the race organizers (with her sister Sandy singing in the background) and some other late night antics at the bar. Be warned, look away at the end…

Download Best Dam Antics Start 8 Minuts In

Finally, over at Barefoot Racing Endurance, there’s a little more insight from Viper who was on the 2nd place team. Here’s what he wrote about the race…

From my point of view – an incredible race: very fast, almost no mistakes. There were 7 lead changes – Jim Devens laid the early pace at 49-50 mph. Once Jim dropped out it was Tony and I within a boat length to the end of the lake, around the turn and back a 1/4 mile. Once Tony went down, I asked for all the speed the driver would give me for another mile.

Here’s where the only mistake there was in the race – when I signalled for the transition the handle slipped out of my hand. This led to a slow transition which allowed Ace in the Hole to pass us and get back in the lead.

A1 put down an impressive run. Just a couple miles in, Chuck caught a toe and went down putting MVS back in front. Ace’s next footer ran very hot closing some of the distance so we picked up the pace to 51+. When the 3rd Ace footer transitioned, MVS transitioned. The rest of the way we transitioned together with MVS running about 20 seconds ahead. Unfortunately, we had one transition remaining. So with a deep sigh, we made the final transition less then 1/4 from the finish putting in Mike Schnieder. Ace passed us during that transition and cruised in for the win.

Pavestone was right there only 1 minute back. Definitely their best showing and sending a message that they will be a force come this fall.

Disappointing for us, but a great battle.

Definitely want to see the video from Pavestone.

– Viper

Barefooting on Smash Brain Raw

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Never heard of Smash Brain Raw before, but apparently they make short video clips and put them up on YouTube. Sounds like a very viable business… or not.

Well they did a video for barefooting featuring Peter Fleck and Mike Seipel. They went out with a film crew and caught a whole bunch of tricks on video. For the host wondering what happens when you hit a log, I can answer that question. It hurts. You fall. And you’re lucky when you don’t break a foot or leg. I know from first hand experience. Here’s the video…

http://youtube.com/v/8TtSr7euSzM


Best Dam Recap 2008

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Ok, maybe that’s overstating my writing abilities a bit, but here goes…

The Best Dam Barefoot Race 2008 was a race for the ages and after 22 miles, it came down to nearly a photo finish because of some crazy footin ability. I don’t know all the details, because my team wasn’t even to the turn around boat at the half way point, but here’s the story that I heard…

MVS #1 was cruising to the finish line, with the 2nd place boat still around the bend, when the remembered they need to have all of their skiers ski in the race at least once. Yes, you’re reading that right, after 22 miles, the 4 or 5 man barefoot team hadn’t even gone through a single complete rotation yet. For me, that’s simply mind bogolling. 22 miles and you hadn’t made it through your whole rotation yet? So about 200 yards from the finish line, they had to drop their footer and do one last footer change. Not sure if there was some difficulties on the change or what, but as they were finishing, Ace In the Hole came around the last bend and beat them to the finish line by 16 seconds. Footstock Dave Mueller was watching from his perch at the Moonlight Bar and I’m hoping he caught this footage on video. He’s always caring his camera around, lets hope he used it. Following MVS #1, MVS #2 crossed the finish line 1:17 behind them. Top 3 spots seperate by 93 seconds. Very close race.

Ace in the Hole featured Chuck Gleason from Barefoot Central, Aaron Schoelzel a past Footstock champion (and RAJ member), Chris Van Zeeland (another Footstock Champion) and 1 or 2 other skiers that I wasn’t familiar with. Clearly, they were stocked with talent. MVS #1 featured footers from St Louis that love to barefoot race. I don’t know all their names, but they come to win and practice for this stuff all the time. They also have a little racap on their Barefoot Endurance Racing Website. They have a first hand account of the ending.

The final results from the race are…
1st Place – Ace in the Hole in 23 minutes and 7 seconds
2nd Place – MVS #1 in 23:23
3rd Place – MVS #2 Pavestone in 24:40
4th Place – Hot Footers in 30:48 (the Beaver Dam Team)
5th Place – Webfooters in 49:40
6th Place – Mad-City in 63:43

Overall, the race, hosted by the Beaverland Must-Skis and Teri Bell, was very well run. The weather more or less cooperated. A little wind that created a few rougher spots on the lake, air temps in the 60s kept everyone from completely freezing, and there was no rain!!! Dawn and Woody’s Moonlight Bar provided a great place to start from and celebrate afterwards. Everyone that stuck around got to hear Footstock Dave take the mike to sing some karaoke. Surprisingly, he sang pretty well. Later on, Chuck did a duet with Dave on the karaoke stage. Bugsy, from the Mad-City team, treated us to an old boy band song (NKOB?) while the Bell family rocked a variety of music.

Props to BareFoot Central for providing some door prizes for the footers and Footstock for providing a free entry into the competition as a door prize as well.

Check back here a little later this week, as I’ve got some footage from our boat of the start of the race. All the boats taking off is quite a sight.

Do It

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That’s Banana George’s moto and he’s still living it.

In a mass email sent to apparently every water skiing related website, Growing Bolder announced a video showing the 93-year old Banana George trying to barefoot again after a winter of health issues. But he’s still doing what he’s famous for and that’s barefooting. Much props to him and I hope to also be barefooting at the age of 93. With no further ado, here’s the link to the video on Growing Bolder.  Go check it out.

Here’s a video of a tribute done for George at Cypress Gardens.

http://youtube.com/v/L_rqkEDYx2o


Mad-City Dual 2008 is On!

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Mad-City Dual 2008 Flyer

The Mad City Dual is on for this year!!! The date is June 7th at Brittingham Park, on the crystal clear waters of Monona Bay! (Located on the corner of W Main St. and Park St. in Madison, WI)
The schedule will be as follows:

  • 7:30 to 9:00 – Registration
  • 9:15 – Skier’s Meeting
  • 9:30 to Last man standing – Figure 8 Endurace Competition.
  • Awards Ceremony to follow

Email them at onelovefooters@yahoo.com for more info.

After the event, the Mad-City Ski Team is hosting a Clean Lakes Festival at Olin Park (just off John Nolen Drive) to raise money to help clean up the Dane County Lakes. Why mention this here? Well, they’ll have bands starting at 2pm, food and drink. Stop by, say hi, and grab a refreshing beverage!

2008 Frostbite Figure 8 Recap

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The 2008 Frostbite Figure 8 Tournament was last weekend. I wasn’t able to attend, but based on what I’ve heard, the weather was much better than expected. 45ish, blue skies and just a little wind. Much better than the anticipated weather of snow or rain and clouds. A little more wind than people wanted, but it could have been much worse.

UW-Stout did a good hosting the tournament once again. The results were:

  • 1st Place – Matt Hoeft
  • 2nd Place – Aaron Schoelzel
  • 3rd Place – Nate Birchler

The after parties must have been pretty good based on the drunk dials I received. Over at BFC Aaron Schoelzel posted a good recap with some added comentary from Footstock Dave. For more details of the shanigans from the weekend, go check out the BFC.com story.

Flying Back Tumble to One

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Hearing that I thought “what the hell is that going to be?”

A slightly better description would be “drag on your stomach, head first in a superman position, then spin on your belly into a back deep position, then stand up one foot only.”

Still confused?  Then just watch the video…

Flying Back Tumble to One

Next on the video play list is video showing the worst possible place to face plant while barefooting…

Not a good spot for a face plant

40+ MPH heading towards a jump, you’d think the guy does everything in his power to not fall.

Finally, for those of us who think we’re good footers, here’s a kid whose probably better than us.  And he’s 5 in the first video, throwing down tumble turns like nothing.

I’m only 5!

Think it’s a fluke?  Here’s Brody a year later…

Are you better than a 6-year old?

Hopefully that drives you to work on your footing skills so you can say you’re better than a 6-year old.

Props to The Rowboat for finding these gems… Personally, I think the guys over there have too much time on there hands.  All they do is search YouTube.

First Figure 8’s of the Year

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The last couple weeks have featured the first figure 8 tournaments of the year. The first was down in Oscala where KSO took home the top prize. Check out BareFootSki dot com for a full recap.

This weekend up in De Pere, WI, 12 brave footers took to the frigid water for the first northern tournmament of the year, the De Dere Figure 8. Marc Donahue of Indiana took home the bragging rights to this tournament. A fuller recap is available at BareFootSki dot com once again.

Next up is the Frost-Bite Figure 8 hosted by UW-Stout this coming weekend (May 3rd, starts at 10am.)

Be sure to check out BareFootSki dot com. In addition to barefooting news, they’ve got a forum, pictues and some decent videos up there as well, including this video of some old school barefooting.

http://www.barefootski.com/albums/album07/SkiChampsAction.wmv

Download Vintage Barefooting – Cypress Gardens (BareFootSki dot com)

Bodies…

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I’ve heard rumblings about this video over on the BFC forums and finally decided to check it out myself.  It’s a video from Toes Up or Faceplant.  The website is a little bright with some crazy fonts, but if you dig around a bit, they have some good stuff.

If you’ve heard the song Bodies by Drowning Pool, you might have an idea about what’s in the video.  If you don’t know the song off the top of your head, you may have heard it in ads for the movies Daredevil, The One, xXx, Fahrenheit 9/11, Rambo or even a US Marines Commercial.  The song caused a little controversy when it came out and some stations even stopped playing it for a while.  Why, you ask?  If you think about the lyrics and think about how it’s been used in advertising, it can easily be misinterpreted.  It is really suppose to be about moshpitting.

Anyways, the most common phrase in the song is “Let the bodies hit the floor.”  According to the lyrics site I found, they say it 27 times, roughly have the lines in the song.  Now, while barefooting there is no floor to hit, but there is the water, and this video, A LOT of bodies hit the water, and they hit the water HARD.  They did a very good job putting all of these crashes to music so file is a pretty big (but it looks good) so be patient.  Enjoy…

http://www.toesuporfaceplant.com/bodies.wmv

Download Bodies Video (Toes Up or Faceplant Production)